Word: banishment
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seen the ubiquitous TV commercial for the hotel chain where, the ad suggests, every employee is prepared to give a guest detailed strategic advice and encouragement for a forthcoming business meeting? Unlike a more traditional advertising claim--that, say, an angel flies out of a can of cleanser to banish grime with her magic wand--this hotel's claim is not inherently or obviously metaphorical. Yet it's clearly not true--a point that probably didn't even occur to the producers of the ad or 99% of its viewers. The deception is not on purpose; few are deceived...
...Cardinal George appointed the first official exorcist in his diocese's 160-year history. Several months earlier, the Vatican had revised the Rite of Exorcism. It eliminated physical descriptions of Satan and such honorifics as the "Father of Lies," but it also vigorously affirmed the church's power to banish him using God's name, holy water, the sign of the cross and readings from Scripture. An exorcists' convention in Rome in July attracted 230 participants; LeBar says at least 18 specifically delegated priests now work...
Annan's goal is to formalize peacekeeping, to banish the deadly ad hocery that so often cripples good intentions. He envisions a time when countries will be eager to have their troops serve. His sales pitch is simple: U.N. operations are the best preview of the kinds of battles countries are likely to face in the future, conflicts that are less state vs. state and more state vs. maniac. "During the cold war, conflicts were neater," he explains. "You had client states [that] could be controlled. Here you are dealing with warlords who don't understand the outside world...
...immensely difficult for undergraduate students to construct one-on-one relationships with a member of the Harvard faculty. We are obliged to fulfill eight Core Curriculum requirements, which banish undergraduate students to impersonal, anonymous lecture halls. Although even the most world-renowned Harvard professors are required to have open office hours, so that students may presumably interact with professors outside of the classroom setting, yet both students and Faculty need to make a greater effort so that office hours are more comfortable and ensure both convenient and meaningful Faculty-student interaction. Professors make little effort to mingle or interact with...
Could something like this really happen? Probably not. Such fanciful scenarios are period pieces. They belong to the 1950s and '60s, when scientists harbored an almost naive faith in the ability of modern technology to end droughts, banish hail and improve meteorological conditions in countless other ways. At one point, pioneering chemist Irving Langmuir suggested that it would prove easier to change the weather to our liking than to predict its duplicitous twists and turns. The great mathematician John von Neumann even calculated what mounting an effective weather-modification effort would cost the U.S.--about as much as building...